Snapchat Parental Controls: The Complete Guide to Keeping Your Child Safe

With more than 165.7 million users, Snapchat remains a celebrated social media platform all across the globe. 

However, the stranger interactions, Snap Map tracking, inappropriate content, and cyberbullying pose some serious questions about the users’ safety and leave the parents wondering — is Snapchat really a safe platform for kids? 

Nevertheless, to address the general concern about teens’ safety, Snapchat has recently launched parental control tools and resources that provide guardians greater oversight of their wards’ activity. 

So join us as we embark upon a journey to master the Snapchat parental controls to help you make the best use of those smart tools and resources for smart parenting. 

Snapchat Parental Controls Quick Overview

Snapchat is a celebrated application among the youngsters, and minors between 13 and 17 years of age make up 20% of the total users. This app is designed around privacy and safety; hence, the content exchanged here is hard to track, which raises a serious concern for effective parental control software. 

Considering the parents’ concern, Snap Inc. has introduced ‘Family Center Tools and Resources’ to tackle the security-related issues. Using them, you can tweak the privacy settings of the application and control:

• Who can contact your child
• What type of content can your younger one access
• Who can view their content

Furthermore, using the parental resources and tools, you can educate your little one about reporting the offensive and explicit content available on the app. 

Intrigued to know more about the Snapchat parental controls?

Navigate to the subsequent sections and learn about its distinctive features and ways to access it!

Enchanting Features of Snapchat Family Center

Parental controls on Snapchat enable the caregivers to tweak the app settings according to their age and interests. The following are some noteworthy features of Snapchat Family Center that make Snap a safe place for minors.  

• Friend List Visibility: Gives the parents access to their younger one’s friend list and chat list. 
• Reporting: Quick reporting options are available for immediate reporting of shady and suspicious accounts on the app.
• Recent Conversations: Provides access to your teen’s conversations, and see with whom they have chatted in the past week.
• Content Controls: Enables you to set content filters for stories and spotlights, restricting all the explicit graphics and videos.
• Location Sharing on Snap Map: See where your minor is via Snap Map for location updates.

These are some features that aid in getting an oversight of the teen’s activity. Using them, you can get insights about your little one’s activity and even regulate what your child can do on the application. 

Method to Set Up Parental Controls on Snapchat

To activate Snapchat parental control on your younger one’s phone, follow the steps given below: 

1. Install Snapchat and browse Family Center in the search field.

   

2. Then add your kid as a friend. 

   

3. After that, send your teen an invitation to join Family Center. 

   

4. Ask your child to Accept the invitation. Children will be able to receive your invitation only if they are below 18 years old. Once they accept your invitation, you’ll be able to monitor their activities.

   

Now your child is added to the family center. With that, you can watch their friend list, see who they are talking to, and confidentially report an abuse. 

Other Ways to Ensure Your Child’s Safety on Snapchat

Well, the features of Snapchat child safety are limited; hence, we suggest you make some additional tweaks in the app settings that we have highlighted in the upcoming sections. Making such changes in the settings will ensure safer scrolling and keep the predators at bay.

Delete My AI Data

My AI feature available on Snapchat poses some serious concerns about inappropriate content and the influence of AI interactions on minors. Though only the Snapchat+ subscribers have the option to unpin or turn off My AI from their contact list, anybody can remove the My AI data on a regular basis. You can turn off the My AI feature using the following steps:

1. Open Settings and scroll down to Account Actions.

2. Then tap on Clear My AI data.

   

3. Confirm the action, and you are good to go. 

   

Delete Dreams Data

Dream’s feature available on Snap is highly celebrated among its users as it creates stylized and fantastical images of users. It basically creates idealized and unrealistic versions of an individual via biometric data collection, mainly facial data. This can raise concerns about data breaches and promote addictive behaviors. 

Furthermore, it also contains mature content and fantasy elements, which make it completely unsuitable for your little ones. Therefore, we suggest clearing the Dream data on a regular basis to avoid perpetrators from stealing the sensitive information. You can delete the Dream data by,

1. Navigate to Settings. 

   

2. Search for My Account.

3. Tap on AI Selfies. 

Note ❗

Only those who have any saved data will see the option of deleting it, and in case you don’t have any data, an option to create AI selfies will pop up on your screens.

4. Hit the Clear My Selfies option to permanently delete the data.

Turn Off Push Notifications

Snapchat has often been criticized by its users for sending adult-themed and vulgar notifications. Such notifications have a very spicy image with a provoking tone to get your attention—‘This shocking image of personal moments was leaked’ or ‘R*ndi wants to connect with you.’ 

Adult-centric notifications with mature themes like this not only increase the screen time in kids but also lead to other problems like premature exposure to adult themes, fuel insecurity, trigger body dysmorphia, and engage them in risky online behaviors. To tackle the issue of offensive notifications you can choose to turn off the push notifications and for that,

1. Open your Profile and hit the Settings option.

   

2. Select Notifications. 

   

3. Decide what type of notifications you would like to receive by unselecting all the columns that you don’t want to receive notifications about. 

   

Choose Who Can Contact Your Child

Online interaction with strangers at an early age can pose safety risks like cyberbullying or privacy violations, and may lead to manipulation by perpetrators. So, if your teen is under 18, we highly suggest you customize who can contact your minor.

1. Move to your profile and hit the Settings option.

   

2. Scroll down to the Privacy Controls and choose the Contact Me option.

   

3. Change the contact me option to My Friends or Friends and Contacts.

   

Change Chat Settings

By adjusting the chat settings of your little one, you’ll be able to decide what sort of contact they have, for how long the messages will last, and whether your kid will receive the notification from a selected user or not. For tweaking the chat setting,

1. Open the user’s profile and tap on the three horizontal dots (…) present at the top. 

   

2. Click on the Chat and Notification Settings option. 

   

3. Toggle off the options that you don’t want to receive notification about. 

Turn Off My Location

To minimize the risk of theft, prevent cyberbullying, and protect your ward against perpetrators, it’s important to turn off their location. To adjust this setting, you can

1. Navigate to your home page and select the Map (location pin).

   

2. Hit the Settings option present at the top. 

   

3. From there, turn on Ghost Mode. 

   

Note❗

You can also choose to hide your minor’s location from particular people, but for greater safety, we suggest completely hiding the location. 

Adjust the View My Story Settings

Lastly, to make your ward’s Snapchat impenetrable, adjust the View My Story settings to friends only. For that, you have to,

1. Navigate to the Profile and hit the Settings option. 

   

2. Scroll to the Privacy Controls and select View My Story.

   

3. Switch the story settings to Friends Only, or you can also customize the list by clicking on the Custom option. 

   

Limitations of Snapchat Parental Controls

Parental control on Snapchat has some limitations, due to which it doesn’t prove to be a completely effective solution against predators and cyber abuse. Here are the following important considerations to make to ensure an indestructible security while browsing on the web. 

• Snapchat is Not a Complete Monitoring Solution: Though Snapchat parental controls provide you with detailed insights about your little one’s activity, they do not monitor their conversation directly. 
• Doesn’t Alert about Suspicious Activities: It does not provide real-time alerts about suspicious acts and behaviors.
• Teen Consent is Required: To enable the parental control settings of Snap LLC, the youngsters must provide their consent. Without their consent, you won’t be able to apply the restrictions.
• Doesn’t Work if Kid has Registered With False Date of Birth: Family Center will not be effective if your teen has created an account with a fake date of birth that makes them 18+ on the application. 

For effective parental control solutions, you need to opt for additional third-party child safety software along with family center tools and resources. 

Add an Extra Layer of Security with SaferLoop Parental Control Software

Though Snapchat offers a comprehensive suite of parental control tools and resources, the built-in controls are not enough to accurately track your kid’s activity, as they don’t provide real-time security alerts and weekly reports. Hence, we suggest you opt for third-party parental control software like SaferLoop.

SaferLoop parental control app provides overall cybersecurity by giving you complete control of your teen’s activity. Apart from web filtering and content blocking, this child safety application facilitates location tracking, screen time management, application control, online activity management, and geo-fencing options. It also provides you with detailed weekly reports of your kid’s online activity, helping you track the digital footprints of your minor.

So what are you waiting for!? 

Get SaferLoop and stay in the loop of their online activities without invading their personal space!!

Frequently Asked Questions

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